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Asus EN8800GT TOP Review

Introduction:

When looking for a video card there are several types of users. There are the people that look only at the price, the intermediate gamer that wants the high-end cards, but has to settle somewhere in the middle and finally, the all-out 'must have the latest and greatest' card on the planet, regardless of cost. While there are are some cards that fall higher on the scale than the 8800GT series of video cards, there are not really that many. This makes the 8800GT fall right into the bread-basket of the intermediate gamer, as well as the higher-end crowd. Able to play many of todays DX10 games at high settings with acceptable frame rates, the G92 8800GT is that card that everyone wants from a cost/performance perspective.

The EN8800GT TOP from Asus, is just one of the G92 8800GT cards on the market. What sets it apart from the crowd? The Asus EN8800GT TOP is the "Top Overclocking Performance" version - the highest performance version Asus sell of this series. Featuring GPU core clock speeds of 700MHZ and GDDR3 memory speeds of 1010MHz, these clock speeds represent increases of 100MHz on the core and 110MHz on the memory over stock speeds. In addition, this card uses what Asus calls the "Glacinator" cooling solution to keep both the GPU core and memory cool. What's so special about this design? Asus clams it keeps the GPU seven degrees Celsius cooler than a stock reference solution. Let's see just how these features impact the performance of this 8800GT video card.

Closer Look:

The Asus EN8800GT TOP version comes in a fairly large package. The front panel of the box highlights the fact that this card comes with the full version of Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts, one of the newest DX 10 games currently available. Additional items highlighted, are the fact that this card is the TOP (Top Overclocking Performance) model. What this means is that this is the manufacturers factory direct overclocked model, where the GPU and memory clock speeds have been increased from the baseline 600MHz on the core to 700MHz and the memory clock speeds have been increased from 900MHz to 1000MHz - both substantial gains from stock speeds. The back of the box lists the additional 'Powerful' features, as well as the benefits of the bundled software. The front of the box has a flip-up tab that highlights the benefits of the Gamer OSD overclocking tool and provides information about the game, 'Company of Heroes'.

The EN8800GT comes in a foam block that protects the card on all sides. The documentation and accessories are bundled into the right-hand side of the box. A full foam enclosure is so much better than some of the other methods manufacturers use to package their cards.

The bundle of accessories in this package includes the Company of Hereos Opposing Fronts disk, a driver disk,a disk containing the manual, a quick setup guide, a dual 4 pin Molex to 6 pin PCIe adapter, DVI to VGA adapter, S-Video to composite adapter and a handy carrying case for your CDs and DVDs.